When it came to be time to move out, I sprayed the lace down with water and just pulled it away. The lace came away really easily but there was a lot of residue on the window. It took me a few tries to work out how to get it clean but what eventually worked best was a scrubby sponge and VERY HOT water (so hot you need rubber gloves). Vinegar also seemed promising but the hot water worked best.

Hello blog friends! I can’t believe it’s been so long since I last posted. I was a little busy growing a tiny human, but that’s no real excuse!

Baby Vita was born in July, 13 days late at the end of a long, hot, heat wave. You should have seen the size of my ankles by the time he was born! Since then we’ve been getting to know each other and I am pleased to report that at seven weeks old he is a shmooshy, smiley little chunk. He probably won’t be showing his face on the blog, but trust me, it’s a cute one!

Unfortunately, as some point during the two-week wait for him to finally make his appearance, I got antsy decided to mess with the server of my blog and all the pictures from the last year or so disappeared! I will eventually get my act together and sort this out (for my sake, I’m sure you didn’t notice or don’t mind) but until this baby starts sleeping a little better, you might just have to bear with my sloppy appearance.

Here’s a few other things made while we were waiting for Baby Vita…

I made the baby a quilt. It’s pretty big for a baby (lap size) but we’ve been snuggling under it together in the mornings and I really like it.

I made a pair of tiny harem trousers using this pattern (although I made it a bit bigger, which was lucky as Baby Vita was 9lb 6oz!). He’s wearing these asleep on my chest right now!

I made him a sunbonnet out of one of his dad’s old work shirts (using the collar for the stiff brim so I didn’t have to bother with interfacing). I used this pattern from Purl Soho, which I highly recommend. I made the neck ties velcro because my pregnancy hamster brain was worried about strangulation. (My new-mother brain laughed at this because my new-mother brain wouldn’t leave the baby alone wearing something as dangerous as a sun hat!)I grew tomatoes, herbs and green beans in the garden. These lucky few made it into a bolognese, sadly the rest rotted on the vine while we were too busy keeping the baby alive!

I made these bloomers from this Knick Knack Knickers pattern from Anna Maria Horner, also using one of Mr Vita’s old work shirts (this was a Pierre Cardin, so nice to sew with!). Writing this reminds me that he hasn’t actually worn these yet, which is probably because they’re very silly! Luckily he will fit in them a while longer so I have plenty of time to embarrass my poor son by making him wear pantaloons. Finally I made these trousers from an old dress and this pattern. They are a little funky, but that’s the charm of homemade, right? Ask my baby again when he’s ten and I’m still making him wear mama-made clothes!

So, I read somewhere that bloggers shouldn’t apologise for a delay in posts. But I’m thinking they meant when it’s been a few days, not something like six months!

So, I’m sorry. We moved, and that was really stressful as the workmen who’d done some fixes to the house before we moved in had accidentally pinched an electric cable and nobody noticed until all our stuff was moved in! So we had to move to my mum’s house while they tore up all the floorboards looking to find the problem. (Not going to lie, it felt like a pretty good time to be a renter).

Then, our new teeny weeny house is so perfect for us and where we are in our lives right now, but it’s also pretty modest and has a horrendously ugly kitchen, so while I’ve been enjoying making it a cosy neat, nothing really feels blog worthy. Which is fine! I just thought I’d warn y’all that Annabel Vita is probably going to be a little more focused on sewing from here on out, with (even) less house stuffs.

But! That said, I haven’t even got my sewing machine out in the five months since we moved, as not long afterwards we learnt that somebody else would be joining us for the ride…

(Sorry for the dark picture! It’s also a little out of date now, but oh well! Imagine me a little tubbier…)

So that’s fun! We have a little baby boy due to join us in July and we are SO excited!

I’ve got my energy back now and am feeling a lot better than I was for the first few months (I didn’t even have the energy to find my sewing machine in all the boxes still unpacked), plus I feel ready to get sewing some bits and pieces for the baby.

I thought I’d pop in with the answers to come of the common questions from the comments section.

Q: Just how opaque is it? I am curious how much privacy this actually allows.

A: I’d say it totally depends on your fabric. If you’d be happy with getting changed behind the fabric as curtains then the fabric will be opaque enough for this window treatment too. I actually have lace curtains in this same fabric, and in both instances I feel happy getting changed behind them if it’s light outside, but I wouldn’t hang out without my clothes on with the light on if it was dark outside. So if privacy is really important, just pick a lace that is more opaque than sheer.

It also depends how directly other people can look into your window! Our bedroom window isn’t super overlooked, although there’s lots of windows out the back, most of the angles are indirect and/or the other window is frosted.

Here’s some pictures (I had to stick my had out of the window to demonstrate as we couldn’t take a pic from outside!) to give you a better idea (remember, a thicker lace would give you more coverage).

This spooky picture is my hand pressed right up against the glass…

And this one is my slightly stubby arm reach out as far as it can, you can just make out my fingers.

Ok! Other questions…

Q: I’m interested in knowing a little more about the mixture. So it’s however much corn starch I want and match it with equal water and then boil the mix

A: You make a paste with equal parts cornstarch/cornflour and hot water and then add extra boiling water. In my case it was two tablespoons cornflour and two tablespoons water to start with and then I mixed in a cup and a half of boiled water from the kettle.

Q: What about mod podge? Would that work as well?

A: We don’t really have modge podge here so I don’t know! It would be a bit more permanent I imagine. If it’s anything like PVA glue (I think it is) then I wouldn’t want to use it on wooden painted windows like we have, but it could work great on more modern windows. It would also be much more expensive. (The “glue” made out of cornstarch is essentially free!)

I am feeling daunted by writing about the wedding, since there are a fajillion photos and things to say. And at the same time I feel like I can’t write about anything else until I at least give you an overview of the wedding! This is stupid, I know, so I’m just going to make a start at some wedding details. I’ll probably circle around back to all of these in more detail, but I just wanted to get something out there so I can get back to popping into blog whenever I want to say something!

As a way of getting a bit of an overview of what the wedding was like, I thought I’d share a letter I received from one of my bridesmaids shortly after the wedding (with a curated selection of printed photos – note to wedding guests, this was SO nice to receive!)…

My bridesmaids are the first four on the left (we will talk about mismatched bridesmaids!

What an absolutely fantastic, wonderful, amazing weekend! Thank you so much for the honour of being your bridesmaid and for entrusting me with your eyebrows and nails! You looked completely gorgeous and completely YOU, and in fact, that description extends itself to the whole weekend. From the handmade bunting to the afternoon tea, and the flowers (real and on fabric!), and the gingham tablecloths, and the pot plants and all the homemade touches… it was just PERFECT and I truly enjoyed every second… helping to decorate the marquee the day before, getting ready with you in the morning, following you down the aisle, chatting up a storm with all your friends, dancing the ceilidh…. I take my hat off to you for being so organised, thinking everything through so carefully, and for remaining so calm and collected throughout the whole weekend! You looked like you thoroughly enjoyed yourself and that is what is important.

Here are some pictures illustrating some of the things LB mentioned….

I wore a pretty robe Mr V had bought me a few years ago to get ready – I liked that it was blue!

The only arrangements we ordered from a florist were my bouquet, the bouttonieres and a hanging ball thingy for the church lynchgate. The bridesmaid flowers were arranged by one of the bridesmaids – who went to Covent Garden flower market and then bought them all in a bucket on the train! (What a hero)

Pew end arrangements in the church – these were done by my Mum and her friends in the village with a few bought blooms but mainly flowers from everyone’s gardens. I’ll do more about the church flowers – there were plenty more!

Shooooooes. We didn’t have a theme but “swallows” emerged as a motif, and again, they were blue!

The tables all had different table cloths that I’d collected, a mixture of gingham and vintage floral embroidery.

My mum and I spent an enjoyable morning a few days before the wedding picking ten different pot plants, which we put into old terracota pots she had already. Total cost of ten centrepieces? £40. (Oh, and about £10 total for all the clippy on mini chalkboards.)

Tiny selection of the 50 metres of bunting I made!

Pom poms in the bar area (and blue mason jars!) I’d had a totally different vision for how these would look, but at 6 o’clock on the day of marquee set up, I delegated the whole job to a bridesmaid and I love how it turned out!

A friend made us this fymo figurine as part of the Homemade Secret Santa we do every year. I was going to make the cake bunting myself, but all my attempts looked awful so I drafted in a friend to finish it for me! (You can see the scones from our afternoon cream tea in the background)

Our dinner was hog roast served family style. So tasty.

The jam jar arrangements from the church got transferred to the farm and put on these hooks to form a pathway up to the marquee. My step dad MADE the hooks and my mum hand-sewed the lace onto the jars. When it got dark, these got replaced with little hanging lanterns (watching my new father-in-law hang the lanterns with his brother is one of my favourite memories of the wedding… I think just because it looked exactly as I imagined and everyone had said it would be too complicated to swap them, but I could tell the two of them were having a good chat!

I didn’t think you’d let me get away with another post where I didn’t show you my whole dress! Mr V didn’t tell me he was going to wear these shoes and he had no idea mine were the same colour! The mysterious Mr V wore a three piece tweed suit and a green tie. He looked so handsome.

We had such a wonderful time. The set-up day was exhausting but I felt so loved as my friends laid tables, painted signs, carried heavy boxes and did a million other tasks just for us. The rain held off until well after dinner. My bridesmaids looked gorgeous. The speeches were heartfelt, yet hilarious (there wasn’t a dry eye in the marquee by the time Mr V finished his). The bouncy castle was a huge, huge success. We forgot to cut the cake until after half the guests had left, but it didn’t matter. My groom wore a three-piece tweed suit and we both wore green shoes (by chance!). Everyone loved the ceilidh and danced their little hearts out. There were just enough babies to be passed around for cuddles. I had made the perfect amount of bunting and it looked great. My brother’s puppy caused small pockets of mayhem at the reception. Our tiny flower girl niece walked down the aisle with my best friend. My husband carried me over the threshold that evening. The next day we were sent off with tin cans on the car and had two glorious weeks in sunny Italy for our honeymoon.

There will be more about all of this, in time, when the photographs come in and there is more to share.

Right now I am still feeling so loved, so spoilt, so blessed. This has been an incredible season of my life, and I keep telling myself that the wedding is just the beginning of what I intend to be a long and happy marriage.

Oh my goodness, this was the quickest, easiest, cheapest project ever but I’m 100 per cent in love with the results. You know those little upgrades that just make your life both better and prettier? This is one of those for our bedroom.

So, privacy. This bedroom has delectable shutters, which I adore, but it makes window treatments kind of hard. You either have to hang curtains in front of the whole alcove (we can tell by the holes in the trim that this is what our predecessors did) or not at all. For the last year and a bit, we’ve opted for the latter option, except for a tension rod light blocking curtain above the shutters.

The shutters are great at blocking all natural light, which is great for lie-ins. But, this room gets crazy beautiful morning light and it always seemed a shame to be getting dressed in artificial light just for privacy.

Anyway, the other day I was browsing the Manhatten Nest blog (looking for something else entirely), when I stumbled on this post of yore about using liquid starch and fabric for privacy in glass windows. Boom!

Obviously, my mind went straight to lace (because my mind always goes straight to lace) and I thought ooh, I gots to try that out one day!

Serendipitously, we headed to Ikea earlier in the week to scope out tea-light lanterns for the wedding. Even more serendipitously, Ikea has JUST started selling lovely scallop edge lace fabric for a mere £1.50 per metre. Boom boom.

Anyway, I got home from work one day and mixed up the starch jelly. I ended up mixing 2 tablespoons cornflour (that’s cornstarch across the pond) with about an equal amount of cold water, then mixing that in about a cup and a half of boiling water from the kettle. I mixed it in a lunch box and the resulting jelly is both spooky and somewhat non-newtonian.

(Random interlude – my first lady boss once told me that some men – ie. our coworker at the time – are like custard powder mix – the more you stir them the more they resist, so keep a light touch. It’s been remarkably useful advice and obviously applies to lots of women too!)

Unlike Daniel, I didn’t soak my fabric in the mix. It just felt like a messy and icky idea so instead I painted a thick layer of gloop on to the window pane.

Then I cut out a rectangle of lace using a template I’d made earlier. I didn’t iron it first but the one piece I had where there was a crease was the hardest to apply so do iron your fabric if it’s creased at all.

Then I applied another thick layer on top, being sure to get it right into all the corners. I tried working top to bottom, centre to corners and a few different ways, but there wasn’t a noticeable difference in ease or result. I did notice that there were sometimes brush marks if I did it too regimented so I ended up going for random patterns of brush strokes.

The best thing about using lace (with holes in) is that there are automatically not air pockets so you don’t have to both squeegeeing them out, which is good because I’m really bad at that sort of thing. The other good thing about lace is it’s very forgiving. On one pane, I ended up with a gap in one place, I just cut a small strip and starch-glued it over the top. I can’t even tell where it was now!

Et voilà! Done. This took less than an hour from start to finish.

Except I’m going to go back and add a row of scallops in the panes just above it. But I figured if I waited to post about it until I’d done that then I’d probably never post about it.

The best thing about this is that to remove it, you just wash it off with warm water, so it’s perfect for renters. My other favourite thing, that doesn’t really show up in pictures, is that it keep the texture of the lace, so it doesn’t look like fake lace contact paper.

I noticed Dan got a lot of comments wondering if this could be done in a hot, humid room like a shower. To that, I’d say it wouldn’t work somewhere that gets directly wet. As for humidity, it probably depends just how humid, but this is so cheap (£1.50 of fabric, probably less than a penny worth of cornflour) and easy to install and uninstall that you should just give it a go and let the internet know how it works out!

I would say it’s probably not great for a window that would get dirty a lot (like above a sink) because you probably can’t wipe it down. If this window gets dingy, I’d probably remove all the sheets and run them through the machine in a lingerie bag. It’s that easy to apply.

Hopefully I’ll get the scallops up soon and will post back about those!